IE 8 has been marinating for some time, and press info and betas had provided a solid picture of its features. Now TGDaily has taken a good look at a near-complete version of the browser.

This IE 8 release candidate is said to be feauture complete, which is to say that we should expect anything significant to be added before the final version ships. Most of what we were expecting is still present, and refined: the porn mo—err, InPrivate, a refreshed interface, stronger find functions, full keyboard navigation and adaptive zoom. Not present, however, are significant increases in Javascript rendering speed or CSS compatibility, areas in which even this mature version of IE 8 was handily beaten by current Firefox and Chrome builds.

Still, the browser looks to be a solid step forward, and despite the one-step-behind spec sheet, aging code base, and TGDaily's convincing assertion that IE 8 won't be able to slow the erosion of Microsoft's browser market share, will provide welcome improvements for that giant, stubborn chunk of the population that just uses whatever their eMachine shipped with. [TGDaily]